Rugby club withdraws plan for relocation… for now

RAMS Rugby Club has withdrawn plans to create a new sports ground between Wargrave and Charvil.

The club applied to Wokingham Borough Council, the planning authority, for permission to convert agricultural land at Riverways Farm on the A4 New Bath Road into sports pitches.

It now plans to submit a new, more detailed application.

Club chairman Andy Lynch said: “The application which had gone in for the change of use at Riverways was not as tight as it could have been in that all it basically said was ‘Can we turn this agricultural land into sports fields?’

“We’ve been advised we need to say specifically what kind of sports fields and facility we want to build and to emphasise the development in the community and impact Rams can have. When the new application goes in it will show the schools we’re offering the facility to and hopefully that will give us a better chance of success.

“Processes like this take an inordinate amount of time and an inordinate amount of talking and we will keep working on it.”

Dr Lilian Pearson Bishop, a Wargrave resident who led a campaign against the development, welcomed the news that the application had been withdrawn. 

She said: “Although I realise that, in time, a revised application might be submitted, I doubt that this will happen in the near future.

“I should like to thank everyone who submitted objections to the planning application which, I am sure, helped to persuade the applicant to withdraw.” The plans for the 13.31-hectare site included a new access road, a pavilion building with a gross internal area of 2,000 sqm, floodlit grass and artificial grass pitches with rugby posts and a car park with capacity for 400 cars and 20 cycle storage spaces.

The club said that it was seeking a new home because it had outgrown its current ground in Old Bath Road, Sonning.

The current site has three grass pitches, which the club says is inadequate to cope with the demand from the local community as it has seen a 50 per cent increase in youth membership over the past eight years.

Mr Lynch said: “We currently have 11 acres at Old Bath Road and there is only a finite amount of rugby we can put on while maintaining quality — we have 560 juniors and five senior teams which is the limit.

“We could flood the place day and night with people, but we wouldn’t have any grass left, the clubhouse would be knocked about and the experience for people would not be a good one for anybody.

“The opportunity to move to a new site a mile and a half up the road, which is 20 acres, is very interesting, worth pursuing and could be a gamechanger for the local community.”

An application for 230 homes has been submitted by Barratt David Wilson Homes for another area of the Riverways Farm site and is under consideration by the council.

A spokeswoman for David Wilson Homes Southern, which is working on behalf of the Rams, said: “We are now developing more detailed plans which will be tailored to the specific needs of the rugby club as part of its relocation plans.

“We are working closely with the club and will seek guidance from the borough council before proceeding with a new application.”